What Sasuke left behind
by Ilkar
Summary: It doesn't matter because every single one of them ignores it because in the end, he is needed and acknowledgement is not part of the deal. So he waits. Character death.


What Sasuke left behind.

He wakes before the sun rises, room dark and cool from the ever open window across from the bed and he waits for his unconscious world to slide away, waits for it to be replaced by the blinding light of reality. The weight of which actually feels like a physical force, holding him down, keeping him pinned to the bed so that he can't breathe.

The room remains dark as he finally sits up and lowers his feet to the cool wooden floor. The room is immaculate. Scrolls are stacked neatly in the shelves beside his father's former desk, the ingrained wood polished smooth from continual use and old age.

Padding silently along the familiar path to the bathroom he rubs at his face, the pressure from the heels of his palms creating a dancing of colourful light behind his eyelids, all blues and yellows and images of the summer that plagues his dreams and casts his current existence into such inadequacy.

Somewhere between cleaning his teeth and drying his shower dampened hair, he looks in the mirror eyes scanning his face contemplatively before flickering away in disinterest to slide across the reflection of the fragment of visible bedroom behind him.

He shivers as he lowers his hands to the edge of the sink, his fingers gripping tightly to the white ceramic. The ghost in his dreams dances just beyond reach because now, it is only a dream. No matter how hard he holds on it's only his imagination.

That thought has him pushing away from the bathroom, just so that he doesn't lash out at his reflection. The reflection he _hates_ because it is a constant reminder. And anyway another broken mirror will just cause a fuss, because he would be compelled to replace it and the more fuss he creates, the longer it will take until he can come back. Come back and stay in the place where his imagination is ok and allowed and real and sane.

Pulling on a too dark uniform, in his too dark room he scratches at his face, his skin already protesting against its confinement and separation from the air but he ignores it and instead straps the porcelain mask to his face. He doesn't have time to be wistful. In another life maybe he would have had the option to walk around with his face on display, in another life he might have wanted to. However here, right now, he does not have that luxury. So there was no sense in dwelling. That would have to wait until another time, another place, when he was free to be where and what he wanted.

....

Tsunade, as ever, doesn't hear him enter. He isn't surprised. She rakes her eyes over his form a few seconds after as he drops silently onto the floor and moves to stand in front of her.

He watches her swallow, eyes too big in her face, before she pulls a scroll towards her and reads the mission to him, aware by now that he doesn't need anything else to help him remember the confidential details.

He sees the pity in her eyes when she glances up again but ignores it because he has too because she doesn't understand. She still needs him. So she entertains him, not because she wants to, for she hates it when he's there, but because it's part of the deal she forced him to make, because she can't loose him. The village can't loose him. They all still need him.

He doesn't bow when Tsunade dismisses him. That's part of the deal too. It's got to the point where he doesn't even talk. He listens, does, returns and ignores the guilt that never leaves her golden eyes.

The guilt is sometimes worse than the pity but this depends on how he feels, on how difficult it was to leave the only place he wants to be. Today he couldn't give a shit about the Hokage's guilt. Today he can still feel the whisper of fingertips against the nape of his neck.

Today he wants done.

....

Mission complete, report relayed, paperwork filed and the porcelain mask can finally be removed. In its place however, a much uglier thing separates him from the rest of Konoha f. To his credit, he tried to remove it, hopeful that his grief and resentment would fade but in the end the betrayal ran far too deep and far too close for that.

* * *

The deal, the hated contract of sorts, demanded that he maintained a public image. In his opinion, this was the worst of it all. If he'd wanted a happy little life, he would have one. The lie, this i_pretence/i _that he did, just to make the Elders nod in approval, made him sick. But they needed him, as they always had and that was hardly going to change. This he knew already- it wasn't like he hadn't had attention issues before. Irony was something he found amusing at times.

According to the rules, maintaining a public image came in several forms, one was showing his face at the hospital, a very public place where he was sure to be seen walking the corridors with his pink haired former team mate (former because he insisted that was part of the deal too). Rumours of a more than friendly camaraderie were always welcome and believable too, considering the previous less than subtle childhood attraction.

What no one but Sakura acknowledged was the way that he never looked at her, never allowed them to touch or to be alone and she only acknowledged it because she knew why he refused her. After everything they had been through as children, after everything she had felt as a young girl in love, as a friend caught in the middle, after it all she had still played her part in the mess their lives had become. It was her fault he was trapped here, not entirely of course but she knew he would never forgive her for the part she played.

He doesn't indulge her anymore, doesn't enquire into her life because he would rather imagine that Sakura, at least the one he used to know, had died the night everything went wrong.

_He'd _rather be dead.

But that wasn't part of the deal.

The other place he was forced to make an appearance was the Academy but sometimes he didn't really mind that. Iruka was still there. Iruka who still smiled at him, still tried to bring back memories of happier times but who had aged in a way that made him difficult to look at, for he had aged not from the slow creep of passing years but from the guilt that haunted his once warm eyes.

Iruka's guilt was always the hardest to ignore.

He hated seeing the children. They did what he told them, responding surprisingly well to his monosyllabic grunts but the fact that they were all scared of him combined with the feel of Iruka's knowing eyes on his back made his skin crawl. The kids didn't matter, but that chocolate coloured gaze displaying guilt and pity and nausea and sadness always managed to get right under his skin and he didn't like that. The control over his own body and emotions was all he really had left; they were not taking that too.

* * *

He walks down the streets of the village that should feel like home and tries to ignore how it doesn't. How it ceased to be his village, his home when the people that lived within its walls made a decision that was not theirs to make.

Before they made him choose which scraps of his pitiful life he could keep and which he couldn't. Before they made him choose between two things he could never choose between. Two things they knew he couldn't live without and when he refused, they took everything anyway, binding him to their will with false responsibility. Even when the pleading began, when he was a shell of his former self begging on the floor at their feet, even then, they had still maintained the belief that he was wrong and they were right.

They had all still believed that they should make the life or death decision that by i_rights/i_ should have been his.

But it was him that had been betrayed, he was the one that had chased and hunted, then been chased and hunted right back.

He had survived it.

He was the orphan.

Yet to them, he was inconsequential.

They wanted his name, his power, his presence and habitation. It didn't matter that he was splintered, still somewhat recognisable but broken beyond all hope of repair.

It didn't matter that somewhere deep inside his childhood self was still screaming.

It still doesn't matter now, though time has shown that the decisions were hasty and misguided.

Nor does it matter that they know a life sentence wasn't needed to effectively end his life.

No. It doesn't matter because every single one of them ignores it because in the end, he is needed and acknowledgement is not part of the deal.

....

At the end of his day he climbs the steps to his front door, relishing the fact that he is now where he belongs. His porcelain mask has been in his backpack since the early afternoon but now he is allowed to remove the other mask that weighs much more heavily.

He knows it doesn't fool those that once knew him, how could it? But it is the only thing that gets him through the daily struggle of just being. It sounds pathetic and that's because it is but all they left him with was a hitae-ate, scratched and dented from years of exile and that was far worse.

The meal he forces himself to eat is routine, there being no sense in giving them more power over him than they already have.

The shower that follows is long and hot or cold, he can't tell because either way he always shivers.

His façade is dropping, sinking with the sun, just like yesterday and every day since the day that they chose to destroy his life.

He hangs his head in shame.

He doesn't want this. Doesn't want to be this broken version of himself but he doesn't know what else to be.

What would his father say? How would he feel seeing his son like this? That's what they all said; he'd heard every version of that question and heard the cutting disappointment in every variation

But he'd honoured his father in his own way. He'd protected and suffered for what his father would have wanted. Surely that was enough of a sacrifice… he could be who he wanted now, right?

He pushes himself away from the table and heads towards his bedroom. His father wouldn't have understood either. Not really. Scowling he slams the door shut behind him. It's not like he would know what his father would have wanted anyway.

* * *

The fate of the Uchiha clan, he'd been told, would be decided at dusk, the sentence read out as the sun sank on the last day of the lengthy trial.

They had known he would fight the decision, it went without saying, and so plans were made to restrain him. It had taken all of them to do it, all of their chakra used to suppress his enough to induce submission.

Back then he had still cared enough to feel guilty when the look he sent them made them flinch.

But seeing proud shoulders weighed down with unnecessary chains had broken his subjection and so eyes dark and skin deathly pale, throat raw and world spinning on a broken axis, he had pleaded. Had looked them in the eyes and begged and one by one they had all turned away. Sakura, Kakashi, Iruka, Neji, Shikamaru, Hinata, Kiba, Shino, Ino... and so may more. Everyone he had grown up with, everyone who he wanted this.

In a last ditched attempt he had turned his eyes to Tsunade, knowing the power to overrule lay solely with her but all she did when faced with his grief was say that necessity demanded it. Her voice had shaken and she had looked ancient but he didn't care because his world was ending and she should have _understood_.

The decision, she whispered, needed to be made without any personal attachment. It was for the good of the village and that should have been enough to stop his tirade.

Those words shattered another dream, more than one heart feeling the blow, for if destroying lives, destroying families, was necessary in the position of leader then someone that had grown up craving inclusion within a family would not be able to go through with it.

Looking up at her, his eyes wide, had felt like looking at someone he didn't know. Despair gave way to rage, red bled out and the force of his chakra shook his captors to the floor. Panic broke out, people screamed and he was glad. Maybe paralysing fear would break through to them, maybe he could show them how much this hurt.

But a voice quiet and sickeningly calm called out to him, the nickname familiar, stealing the breath from his lungs.

The eyes, dark and resigned and for once open held his and the red slowly faded away, letting the others cage him once again. He didn't look away even as their combined pressure grew, almost forcing him to his knees, his breathing shallow and laboured.

Order quickly resumed, ANBU surrounding him as Tsunade read aloud what would happen if he lost control again. He blinked up at her when she used what he most feared against him, pinning him more firmly under the heel of the village.

The seal that had helped and hindered him, that had defined him in the eyes of others, that had owned him, the seal he loathed was to be used against him one more time.

If he didn't comply they would take control. A threat beyond all other threats as no one could control it except him. A truth that all present knew, a truth that meant it would be his decision, his responsibility and his fault if he rebelled. He would be the one killing the innocents, he would be tearing families apart, and he would be the creator of orphans and fear and hate.

He watched a tear slide down the face of the Hokage, and yet she still forged ahead, demanding that he acknowledge the term. His father would have wanted it she said. The words felt like needles as she spoke them. The little he knew of his father was like a beacon of warmth inside him, keeping him focused with a single-minded sense of duty. How dare she use that against him? The lack of protest from those around him triggered a jolt of betrayal so strong he was amazed to find himself still standing.

His head had spun. They were going to do it. They were going to kill him. There was nothing he could do.

He didn't remember much of what happened after that, he only knew that when the icy grip of realisation took hold he could do nothing but look straight into the eyes that had controlled his life even before that fight in the rain.

* * *

Somewhere between cleaning his teeth and drying his shower dampened hair, he looks in the mirror eyes scanning his face contemplatively before flickering away in disinterest to slide across the reflection of the fragment of visible bedroom behind him.

In another life maybe he would have had the option to walk into a bedroom where someone waited for him, in another life he might have wanted to. However here, right now, he did not have that luxury. So there was no sense in thinking about it. That would have to wait until another time, another place, when he was free to be where and what he wanted.

He lies down on his bed and gazes up at the ledge of the ever open window, thinking despite his resolution not to, of the night that a cloaked figure had appeared there.

He remembers the feelings of annoyance at his ever superior air and the euphoria at seeing it first hand again. His eyes cloud over and he stares.

When he's done reminiscing, which would be never but for another mission that needs his attention in the morning, he grows tense, forcing his eyes closed- praying that he won't be assaulted with the images of that sunset, hoping his imagination creates something beautiful instead.

* * *

It began with subtle hand signs, shadows long and distorted, quiet except for the hum of building chakra. He had not been able to look away as the pressure in the air around them grew to a crescendo that popped his ear drums. He had had no attention for anything but the face across from him.

He had stood and watched, helpless, as the other winced, dark eyes widening in pain, fists clenching in an attempt to endure the feeling of having his chakra cut off. The loss of each channel was marked by another wince, a growing shortness of breath but through it all their gazes held firm, if only from a sheer force of will.

Emotions kept hidden for so long broke free in those eyes, heartache that he was at the root of another betrayal, anger that this was happening and constant pleading apologies. And as the dark eyes held his they told him that he mustn't break under the pressure, demanding him that he must withstand.

He had shaken his head then, words spilling from his mouth, irrespective of who heard. Words of forgiveness and understanding, consolation and promises that everything would be ok, lies that they both knew were lies but he was still unable to quieten. He had assured with every sentence that there was nothing left to forgive anymore, that it wasn't his fault that this was happening, that _everything would be ok._

When the head of dark hair fell forward, his voice had reached such a desperate pitch that the eyes he needed rose again, a smirk on the face he didn't know how to live without. Admissions that he didn't know what to do, ebbed away as softly spoken words from their past made his breath catch.

"Bibiri-kun,"

He had blinked, sprung forward in a graceless lope and fallen to his knees so quickly that the sting of his grazed palms had never even registered.

The grit staining his fingers had left dark smudges down the flawless cheeks of the other kneeling in front of him but he had found that he didn't care.

Didn't care that he was crying or that everyone could see. All that mattered was that the other understood and that he himself withstood.

There on the floor he found didn't care if he was betraying the village. He didn't care because after all that had happened he'd be a traitor again and again and again, so long as it meant the other finally understood.

A pale hand had found his, squeezing as another flow of chakra was cut off, leaving his face strained and chalky. The fingers that dug into his skin were icy but they were still strong, they were still alive, they still had time.

"Sasuke…"

* * *

He blinks the tears away as he is jolted from his dreams. It is not morning yet, in fact it's barely night.

He can still hear people moving around outside, the light breeze shifting the curtains at the ever open window.

He sits up and makes his way to the bathroom, leaving the door ajar so that he can see into his bedroom from the reflection in the glass.

He looks in the mirror eyes scanning his face contemplatively before flickering away in disinterest to slide across the reflection of the fragment of visible bedroom behind him, holding his toothbrush so tightly his hand starts to shake.

And he waits.

He waits because before Sasuke had always appeared behind him, arms strong and warm and there by choice, somewhere between cleaning his teeth and drying his shower dampened hair.

He waits because he needs him to appear.

His imagination isn't enough. The fleeting memories of fingertips on the back of his neck, or lips at his ear as he dozed in the bed behind him, wrapped around each other in their own little long awaited bubble, the remembrance of whispered admissions and promises isn't enough to made enduring worthwhile.

Somewhere along the road they must have miscalculated. Their plan went awry.

He waits because this can't be all Sasuke left behind.

* * *

Ok so that's it. I'm sorry if it's poor. I started it at 6 this morning because it's been eating me alive and although I'm not happy with it I need to post it because I have other things, like finals, that I need to do.

No doubt I'll edit it once everything else is wrapped up.

I also need to stop using commas. I love them.


End file.
